The fantasy drama Game of Thrones once again topped the list of the most pirated and illegally downloaded television shows of the year for the fourth year in a row.
Interestingly, eight out of the top 10 list of most pirated TV shows are shown in South Africa by M-Net, across its range of channels on DStv.
TorrentFreak has released its annual list of most pirated TV shows and Game of Thrones by far tops the list with 14,4m illegal downloads in 2015 so far.
Second is the zombie drama The Walking Dead, with 6,9m downloads.
It’s followed by nerd comedy The Big Bang Theory with 4,4m, Arrow with 3,9m, The Flash with 3,6m, Mr Robot with 3,5m and Vikings with 3,3m.
The new Supergirl with 3m, The Blacklist with 2,9m and Suits with 2,6m round out the top 10 list’s eighth, ninth and 10th places.
The astounding numbers are only for the most downloaded single episode of a series, with a series that can only be listed once for the purposes of compiling the list.
In reality, multiple individual episodes of a single series on TorrentFreak’s top 10 list for 2015 will have millions of downloads of their own.
TorrentFreak also says the illegal downloads for each of the shows will actually be “significantly higher” as online streaming and downloads for file-hosting services are not included since there are no public sources to draw data from. — Channel24